08/18/2025
Waterbury paper 8/17:
Picking up the pieces
A year later, western Connecticut is still recovering from catastrophic floods
By Austin Mirmina Staff Writers
As surging floodwaters threatened to swallow her Oxford home on Loughlin Road, Eugenia Purcella stayed put.
For nearly 65 years, the brook beside her house had been a steady, soothing presence. But on Aug. 18, 2024, it turned violent, swelling into a dangerous flood.
That day, Purcella sat by her screen door, calmly watching as the water rose more than five feet.
“I was keeping a very close eye on that water,” she said. “I was watching it almost knowing that it’s going to keep me safe and I was not frightened.”
Then, as the waters appeared to recede, Purcella “did something silly” and went to sleep. She was nearly swept away in her slumber.
Overnight, a good chunk of her land washed away. She isn’t sure what caused the damage – a final surge of rising water, or an over-saturated ground that collapsed like a sandcastle under an ocean wave.
When she awoke, her front yard and driveway were gone. Nearby, her shed and car teetered on the edge of the crumbling bank.
But her home remained.
“I just considered myself so lucky because it stopped just in time,” she said of the floodwaters, which destroyed dozens of structures in parts of western Connecticut.
The catastrophic flooding – more than a foot of rain in just hours and without much warning – experienced in western Connecticut that day caused extensive, unimaginable destruction. Three people were killed, homes and property were ruined, roads and bridges were wiped out. For some left picking up the pieces, it took months to recover. For others, they are still picking up the pieces. Some roads and culverts have not yet been rebuilt. And many did not have flood insurance to help in the cost of fixing the chaos left behind.
In the days and weeks that followed, Purcella, who lives alone, received around-the-clock support from first responders, who cleared the backlog of trees jamming the brook and pumped the four-and-a-half feet of water that had flooded her basement. TEAM, a Derby-based nonprofit, built her a ramp so she could more easily get in and out of her home and replaced her damaged boiler and furnace.
She’s still waiting for her front yard and driveway to be repaired, and her shed remains precariously perched on the bank’s edge. The once waist-high brook, where Purcella pushed her young daughter in an inflatable canoe, now flows as a slow, shallow trickle, the result of restoration work.
George Temple, Oxford’s first selectman, recently said the town planned to open bids for the reconstruction of Loughlin Road, part of which remains closed. Purcella said she’s cautiously optimistic that her repairs will follow soon after.
‘This ungodly howl’
The power went out with the bang of a blown transformer at Dee Pierce’s Southbury home in the early morning after the downpours of August 18, 2024, and she and her husband got up to investigate.
“Then we heard this ungodly howl, and I can’t even describe the sound. I hope I never hear it again,” Pierce said. “I’m probably going to get emotional, because this is hard for me, but I heard this ungodly howl that sounded like wind, and I ran to the dining room window.”
Outside of the home on Southford Road was rushing water hundreds of feet across, sweeping up everything in its path including cars, outbuildings and every tree on the Pierces’ nearly 4-acre property. Their home was in the path of millions of gallons of water unleashed when a culvert gave way under Southbury’s Larkin State Bridal Trail, creating a flood compared to a dam giving way.
A year later, the Pierces are still rebuilding, restoring the lower levels of their home and slowly replacing key structure elements of their exterior. They’ve spent more than $100,000 so far, with at least that much needed to complete the work.
Not one dollar of that sum has come from their homeowner’s insurance. Every claim was rejected due to the Pierces’ lack of flood coverage because the home was not in a designated flood zone.
“I know that you can get private flood insurance, but we had never had any kind of water even come up to our property,” Pierce said.
Most of her neighbors are in the same boat, due to the standard exclusion of flood coverage on most homeowners policies.
Dozens of people dealing with insurance issues in the wake of the flooding have called the state Insurance Department since the disaster, said Gerard O’Sullivan, director of consumer affairs.
“One of the biggest issues that we always run into is that consumers don’t realize that flood isn’t covered under their homeowners policy,” O’Sullivan said. “That’s really where we’re trying to make inroads and make things available to consumers, so they understand what coverages they have and what they may need.”
Only 4% of homeowners nationwide have flood coverage, and that number has traditionally been even lower in Connecticut. O’Sullivan said he hopes that news of the devastating impact of the 2024 floods has helped convince more residents to pay a bit extra in case of a disaster like last year’s storm or potential wind and water impacts from the upcoming hurricane season.
“Make sure that you understand that this could happen to anybody,” O’Sullivan said. “Anywhere it rains, it can flood. So people need to be prepared for that.”
For Dee Pierce in Southbury, the pain caused by the loss of precious possessions like her mom’s china and the financial stress of rebuilding without insurance has been offset by gratitude for the help she received from her community. Volunteer firefighters, off-duty cops and neighbors she had never met before showed up at her house in the days after the flood to help clean up, and a Derby nonprofit agency, TEAM Inc., helped the couple get a heat pump to replace their destroyed system as winter approached.
“Every time it rains, my husband and I are terrified: Is this going to get up high enough where it’s going to do more damage?” Pierce said.
—Liese Klein
‘I miss her every day’
Oxford resident Ethelyn Joiner, known as “Gay” to her family, would spend time caring for her aunt’s seriously ill husband.
In the final years of his life, Joiner would shave him, bathe him and take him in a wheelchair outside to get some sun, the aunt, Lauretta Rae Dickstein, said. “She would show up and jump in and do the things that were wearing me out.”
The 65-year-old Joiner wound up dying months before Dickstein’s husband, Stuart, when she was caught in the catastrophic flooding that raced through Oxford during torrential rains on Aug. 18, 2024.
“I miss her every day and think about her every day and talk to her every day,” Dickstein said.
Joiner was very independent and loved her son, who went looking for her that day when she didn’t answer her cellphone, Dickstein said. He now has a child that Joiner never had the chance to meet, she said.
Dickstein said Joiner had a mind of her own and was a caring, kind and funny human being. They often would visit museums, art shows and antique stores together because she wanted to have as much knowledge as she possible could, her aunt said.
She is missed by Dickstein and the other family members she left behind, Dickstein said: “It has brought the rest of the family together, we are communicating more than in the past.”
On Monday, which marks a year since the floods and Joiner’s death, Dickstein said she has no plans other than recalling her niece and the memories they made.
“I just want to mark the day as peacefully as I can and try to remember all the good times we had together,” she said.
— Lisa Backus
‘That’s it, I’m retiring’
Ed Zehall was ready to retire in the aftermath of the devastating floods that tore through the Klarides Village strip mall in Seymour, where his Valley Coins shop has long called home.
He lost 70% of his merchandise and the building in which his once shop filled with coins and currency sits was condemned, forcing complete reconstruction of the interior. But Zehall said the warmth shown by friends, family, customers and countless volunteers caused a change of heart.
Nearly 16 weeks to the day, in December, Zehall reopened.
“This is what I love to do ... I was so happy to be back,” Zehall said standing in his newly renovated shop.
But he does keep a piece of paper taped to the wall, showing the water line some 5 feet, 4 inches off the ground, as a reminder of the struggle to come back.
“When I walked in here the following day after the flood, I saw the damage, I said ‘That’s it, I’m retiring.’ I actually started giving away stuff that was not damaged by the flood waters.
“But the volunteers came ... family, friends, customers, I said I think we can do this,” he recalled.
Zehall said the receding flood waters left behind a quarter-inch thick layer of river mud on everything. The flood waters also carried septic overflow which led to areas of the plaza being condemned.
In all, Zehall said the flood cost him personally some $460,000 since he, like most, did not have flood insurance.
He salvaged what coins and paper money he could, but in the end, he had to become a full-time buyer of merchandise and buy all new equipment, replacing what was submerged under the 5-foot-4-inch water line.
“This is something you see on the news,” Zehall said about the flood. “It happens elsewhere ... you never expect it is going to happen to you, you never expect it’s going to happen in Seymour, Connecticut. It was an act of God.”
— Brian Gioiele Damage on two fronts
Karla Urban was on vacation, but home with a broken leg, when floodwaters washed into the basement of her residence on Old Field Road in Southbury.
She was awakened around 1:30 a.m. when the second wave of torrential rains poured down. “That was scary. That’s when I heard things moving,” she said.
Water washed over the entire street. In addition to devastating the roadway, water 6-feet-deep washed into her home’s basement.
“It ruined everything in the basement, everything that I had down there,” Urban said.
The destroyed items included the home’s furnace, electrical panel, and the washer and dryer. She had no electricity for 31 days and lacked hot water for closer to 60 days.
“Now, every day, when I leave my house, I’m reminded of it. Driving out the driveway,” she said. “The flood was right there.”
Recovering from that damage in the year since the flood has been a work in progress, she said. Old Field Road is still not passable and needs to be rebuilt.
“There’s a giant crater right by our house,” Urban said. “The road is still broken. They’re still working on it. It’s going to be done, hopefully, in October.”
“For me personally, so many people came and helped,” she said, noting that she is still recovering from a broken femur. “I could hardly walk and I couldn’t do anything, and so, many people came and worked and helped. They hauled stuff out of the garage and threw it in a dumpster. The community was amazing.
“I’m very proud to live in this town. It makes me want to tear up, because people were amazing,” Urban said.
For Urban, the impact of the flood was two-fold. Not only was her home and neighborhood affected, her business was affected as well.
Urban manages The Bakery at 77 Main St. South in Southbury. Floodwaters carried away the propane tank used to operate the business’s oven.
That tank was found behind the Bank of America across the street, on Garage Road, Urban said.
Urban feels fortunate that The Bakery was able to quickly open after her return from vacation. It had a temporary propane tank solution in place, and was cleared by the health inspector to open. Other businesses, like the Subway restaurant just down the road, were less fortunate.
— Michael Gagne ‘Hoping it won’t happen again’
The two-story stone Newtown home Matthew Capozziello Jr. shared with his daughter, Nicole Capozziello, and a tenant that lived on the first floor was devastated last August. Four feet of water flooded the home’s basement and first floor, destroying the furnace, hot water tanks and electric system, along with his two motorcycles and Chevy Silverado truck.
Capozziello Jr. and his tenant were rescued by a boat during the flooding.
“My daughter wasn’t home, but me and the (the tenant) downstairs were there,” Capozziello Jr. said last August about being at home with his tenant when the flooding began. “She got scared, dialed 911, and then it started coming over the back deck and started coming in the house… We had to get rescued in a boat — they had to come from (Route) 25 and they had ropes.”
Between a $250,000 insurance policy he obtained through FEMA with help from his insurance company and money he received through a fundraiser put together by radio station 99.1 WPLR and TV station WFSB, Capozziello Jr. was able to rebuild and add new appliances and furniture.
Capozziello Jr. said his daughter now lives on the first floor while he lives on the second floor.
“If I didn’t get that money from FEMA, I would have been really jammed,” Capozziello Jr. said of rebuilding his home. “It took a good year, but we’re back in the house… We’re back together again, we’re normal again and we’re hoping it won’t happen again.”
— Kaitlin Keane A lot of time, a lot of money
Cathy Dibner said the “horrific death” of her chickens from the Aug. 18 flooding “haunts me every day of my life.”
“‘How will we ever get back to normal?’ and ‘Will we ever get back to normal?’ – those are the questions I have,” the Southbury resident and owner of Cathy’s House of Chickens said.
Dibner’s property and livelihood as a local farmer were destroyed when a culvert broke on the Larkin State Park Trail, a 10.3-mile-long trail that borders her property, causing water from the Branch Bullet Hill Brook to break and create a mudslide in her backyard.
Within a matter of seconds, Dibner’s livestock barn and over 100 chickens were washed away by the floodwaters, along with her pavilion, pool house and trailers. The flooding also buried Dibner’s in-ground pool and destroyed her dump truck.
Dibner said the past year has been stressful as she and her family have endured “a lot of hardship trying to get everything running” again.
“It’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of money that I don’t have,” Dibner said, adding that she struggled to receive help from the state in terms of funding and no reimbursement from her insurance company.
In addition to replacing her breeding birds, Dibner has built a new, bigger livestock barn, which now houses her remaining birds. It includes over a dozen or more breeding hens and 80 roosters. Paying for all the work “out of pocket,” Dibner said she plans to install solar panels on the new barn as well as security cameras, gates, fencing and additional sweeter heaters for her birds.
Meanwhile, the devastation of the flooding remains on Dibner’s property, with mounds of dirt and trees around her yard and her pavilion and other possessions still covered in dirt. She said flooding from the Branch Bullet Hill Brook created four small waterways on her property now and her pool is still missing.
Beyond the physical damage is the fear that lingers between Dibner and her family every time a flash flooding warning is reported.
“Every time it rains, my daughter has anxiety so badly,” Dibner said. “I got stuck in a barn a few weeks ago and we had a really bad storm and I had a massive anxiety attack… “It’s in my head… ‘What happens if the rest of this comes down and creates another mudslide and takes out my new barn and all my animals?’”
— Kaitlin Keane Community support
October 14th.
That’s a day that Isabel Perez won’t soon forget. It’s the day she and her family were able to reopen the La Terraza Mexican Grill on Oxford Road after the catastophic flooding of the Little River swept away the parking lot, tore the gas tank from its moorings and hurled it down stream and flooded their basement with more than 6 feet of water.
Perez, whose family opened the restaurant only two months before, said in an interview that when the family went to check out the damage the morning after, they were expecting the worst.
“I thought we would find tables and chairs floating,” Perez said.
That wasn’t the case, but the waters had ruined all the food — including a cake they were supposed to deliver that day for a quinceañera - and heating and air conditioning units in the basement. It had also ruined all the spare furniture that was stored in a shed next to the brightly-colored, two-story former bakery on Oxford Road near town hall.
Perez, who had worked in a restaurant for 10 years before deciding to become her own boss, said there was a wide range of emotions that she had trouble describing because she thought the family dream may be over.
“I was crying. It’s really hard to explain,” said Perez, 39.
But in the coming weeks and months after the devastation, which included having to replace a corner of the the foundation, Perez came to believe that the challenges that were being put before the family were God’s way of telling them to persevere.
And there were many acts of kindness from the community that bouoyed their spirits as well. A local man donated a Dumpster for the ruined furniture and community members showed up to help move it out of the shed in just a few hours. People would come by with snacks and food while they were working on cleaning up.
And a group of youth soccer players made colored bracelets and sold them, bringing the proceeds to the family.
“Those little things made us want to come back stronger,” she said. “I feel grateful for all the community support.”
Perez estimated that the family had to spend about $25,000 on the repairs, but added that the property owner helped greatly with restoring the parking lot. The family also received some grants from the state.
“We’re working really hard to get better every day,” she said. “People coming back, that makes me happy.”
— Steven Goode
